It’s a Saturday night in the
middle
of
nowhere.
You’re
driving down a dirt road (in
a
pickup
truck,
obviously)
and
passing
cornfield
after
cornfield.
Eventually
you
reach a massive bonfire where
attractive young people are
gathered. Tailgates are down.
Speakers
are
turned
up.
Everyone is drinking.
It’s a common image in
popular contemporary country
music.
The
light-hearted,
quasi-romantic night in the
backwoods. One that Little Big
Town turns on its head in the
group’s latest release Nightfall.
“I’d paint a river of stars
for you / Cross the ocean of
a sapphire blue” lead singer
Karen Fairchild claims on the
cinematic
“River
of
Stars.”
Other
tracks
don’t
detail
landscapes so explicitly, but
all of Nightfall exists in this
starry, inky blue atmosphere.
“Next to You” and the title
track glow with the kind of
vulnerability
that
can
only
come out in the dark. And while
the band has fun on songs like
“Over Drinking” and “Wine,
Beer,
Whiskey,”
it’s
obvious
throughout Nightfall that Little
Big Town’s nights are largely
long, quiet and contemplative.
Nightfall
is
constructed
to give the group’s strong
harmonies the space to shine.
Stripped-back
instrumentals
tend to build into bridges that
burst
into
sparkling
group
revelations — like the moment
you’ve been staring at the sky
just long enough to shiver. Still,
Little
Big
Town
recognizes
that our haunting, late night
thoughts
aren’t
always
so
syrupy. In fact, they oftentimes
sting.
On “The Daughters” Fairchild
challenges commonly-held beliefs
without blinking. “I’ve heard
of God the son and God the
Father / I’m just looking for
a God for the daughters” she
sings.
Songs
like
“Problem
Child” and “Questions” explore
the feelings of self-doubt and
insecurity that tend to lurk
in the early morning hours,
whether they be about one’s
identity or a past relationship.
The standout “Sugar Coat” is
equal parts clever and gutting.
A woman’s tendency to gloss
over the ugliness in her life,
like her husband’s infidelity,
is made physical. The coat was
“passed down” from her mom
and Fairchild’s voice soars as
she ends up wishing she could
take it off.
The atmosphere of Nightfall
is a walk in the woods miles
away from a corn field, bonfire
bash.
But
Little
Big
Town
has never been a stranger
to wandering off the beaten
path. In 2015, the band had
their
biggest
crossover
hit
to date with “Girl Crush,” a
love letter between women …
about a man. In 2016, the group
released the Pharell Williams-
produced
Wanderlust.
The
group’s
composition
itself
is noteworthy — very few
successful country groups are
fronted by women and even
less by women over 40.
What’s
most
remarkable
about Nightfall then, is that it
finds Little Big Town as clear-
headed and wide-eyed as ever.
Nightfall proves their staying
power.
Despite,
or
maybe
because of, their wandering
and “against the odds” makeup
as a band, Little Big Town is
triumphant
on
their
ninth
studio
album,
something
artists in any genre are lucky
to claim.
Boasting
a
sound
that’s
funky and dark, simultaneously
sleek and earthy, Little Big
Town has never been very
concerned with proving their
country
cred.
Nonetheless,
they’ve managed to make their
own lane in the genre. It isn’t
a dirt road, but it still has a
worthwhile view.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, January 22, 2020 — 5A
Little Big Town’s latest
is a slice of country life
U.S. AIR FORCE / KEN HACKMAN
KATIE BEEKMAN
Daily Arts Writer
Over the last year, critically-
acclaimed shows such as “The
Act,”
“Unbelievable”
and
the
recently
released
Aaron
Hernandez
mini-series
“Killer
Inside”
represent
America’s
newfound fascination with the
true-crime
genre.
Similarly,
the popularity of shows such as
“Black
Mirror”
and
“Stranger
Things” reveals the expanding
market for horror. All factors
considered, it was only a matter
of time before the genres of
horror,
crime
and
mystery
melded together on HBO to give
us “The Outsider,” the televised
adaptation of the Stephen King
novel of the same name.
Georgia
detective
Ralph
Anderson
(Ben
Mendelsohn,
“Ready Player One”) is called to
investigate the most horrifying
case he will probably ever work
on — the violent death of a child
named Frankie Peterson, who has
been deformed in unimaginable
ways. As any person would react
in this situation, he rushes to find
a way to get the monster that did
this off the streets and to deliver
vindication
to
a
community
rattled by this unthinkable crime.
Several
reliable
witnesses
identify
Terry
Maitland
(Jason
Bateman,
“Arrested
Development”),
a
universally-
liked local, as a suspect. A
seemingly normal youth baseball
coach,
no
one
can
imagine
Maitland
committing
such
a
crime. However, the evidence
points to another conclusion: A
woman saw him helping Frankie
into his van, a kid saw him
come out of the woods with
blood all around his face and
he was spotted all over the area
on security cameras. He even
called a cab and made sure it
was recorded. It’s almost as
though Terry wanted to be
seen.
Encouraged by the District
Attorney Bill Samuels (Michael
Esper,
“Ray
Donovan”),
Anderson publicly arrests Terry
at
a
Little
League
baseball
game. Without DNA evidence
nor questioning, the police have
publicly condemned Maitland
as a child murderer. But, despite
the
overwhelming
physical
evidence that points to Terry
being at the scene of Frankie’s
death, there is video evidence
that proves he was dozens
of miles away at a literary
conference at the exact same
time of the murder. How can he
be two places at once?
It’s
impossible
to
blame
Anderson for his decision to
implicate
Maitland,
however,
the show makes it clear that
sometimes, the easy answer is
not always the right answer.
The show also allows viewers to
question
Anderson’s
integrity:
Is his hasty push
towards
justice
derived out of a
concern
for
the
community,
or
rather just a means
to vindicate the loss
of his own son, who
died at a young age?
Fans of the book
might
be
slightly
disappointed
that
the first 170 pages
of
the
novel
are
rushed through at
a
breakneck
pace
in
the
pilot,
but
executive
producer
Jason Bateman is clearly more
interested in the action of the
aftermath than the foreplay
of the set-up.
It’s
hard
to
argue
with
this rationale,
as the hook is
good enough to
distract
from
the sometimes
dizzying
pace
of the show. By
propelling
us
forward
into
the center of
the
narrative,
“The Outsider”
makes us more
engaged than
we would be if
the show had taken its time.
Sometimes,
the easy
answer is not
always the
right answer.
Taking a look inside HBO’s
newest hit, ‘The Outsider’
TV REVIEW
TV REVIEW
JUSTIN POLLACK
Daily Arts Writer
HBO
The French-Canadian author
Stéphane Larue has worked in
the restaurant industry for most
of his adult life — he’s now the
part-owner of a bar in Montreal.
In an interview, he described
the progress of his career in the
kitchen:
“Dishwasher,
kitchen
helper. Then into the dining
room: busboy, waiter, maitre-d’,
manager.” Later in the same
interview he comments that “the
dishwasher sees everything, like
a fly on the wall.”
This easy familiarity with the
lives of kitchen workers is clear in
the pages of Larue’s debut novel,
“The Dishwasher,” which was
recently translated into English
by Pablo Strauss. His novel places
us in the teeming underside of
nightlife in Montreal, peopled
with
the
restaurant
workers,
bartenders
and
bussers
that
make it possible. His unnamed
protagonist enters this world
mostly
out
of
desperation:
after
months
of
succumbing
to his gambling addiction, he
has exhausted his savings and
the patience of his friends —
Larue based his writing about
gambling addiction on his own
experiences, and so he depicts
it with bracing intimacy. His
exasperated cousin Malik loans
him eighty dollars and gives
him a lead on a job at a high-end
restaurant,
work
that
proves
both punishing and rewarding,
and begins, slowly and haltingly,
to
lift
him
from
his
initial
pathetic condition.
Larue writes in an unusually
direct, immersive way, generally
avoiding
expository
writing.
He instead prefers to describe
more or less every moment of
his protagonist’s life for the first
few weeks at his job. Nothing is
skipped or bypassed; we nearly
get to the level of seeing every
dropped dish and scrubbed pan.
His style feels exhaustive: each
detail needs to be explained,
itemized
and
followed
to
conclusions. This is especially
apparent in the extended scenes
of kitchen work early on in the
book. To pick an example at
random:
“From that moment on I
tried desperately to keep up as
Bébert listed off the thousand-
and-one things I had to do. He
tossed ten bags of spinach onto
the stainless prep counter. My
job was to pull off the stems
and throw out any rotten bits.
He came back out of the walk-
in with two waxed cardboard
boxes which he threw at the
foot of the sink. I was to pick
out twenty heads of romaine,
and forty heads of leaf lettuce,
pull off the leaves, wash them in
ice-cold water, then dry them in
an unwieldy salad spinner that I
had to hold against my body as I
turned.”
It continues in this fashion
for nearly fifteen pages. This
description is both utilitarian
(forty
heads
of
leaf
lettuce
versus twenty heads of romaine,
don’t
make
a
mistake)
and
physical,
sensory
(“ice-cold”
water, the salad spinner that has
to be embraced). Larue seems
intent on putting the reader
into the head of his protagonist,
making
the
reader
inhabit
the stress of the kitchen. This
style is definitely an acquired
taste. The plot is so tightly
wound,
so
furiously
coupled
to the materials of existence,
that
it
is
both
invigorating
and exhausting to read. The
intensity and detail of Larue’s
writing
feels
appropriate
for
what he’s trying to convey about
his subject, and it works well in
bringing his world to life.
Rhythms
start
to
emerge
from this dense texture. The
restaurant workers do grueling,
difficult, fast-paced work night
after night and then usually go
to an after-hours bar to exhaust
the remainder of their energy.
The scenes in dimly lit dives
are hazy and confusing, largely
taken up by the protagonist
struggling to understand what’s
going on while eyeing the video
lottery machines in the corner.
These wild nights out become
basically another method for the
protagonist to distract himself
from the thought of gambling,
one that only sometimes works.
He never really becomes a hero,
and no one thing can necessarily
keep him away from his vice. We
instead get the sense of someone
buffeted around by forces largely
outside of his control, remaining
at the mercy of his own desires
and fixations.
To that end, Larue has a
certain
attention
toward
the
surrender
and
decreation
inherent in this lifestyle. The
life
of
a
restaurant
worker
starts to feel centrifugal and
self-similar — hedonism erases
frantic
industriousness
and
vice versa. Work and play share
a potential for dissociation, for
a kind of destructive flow. The
point is driven home by the
protagonist’s taste in music —
there’s a depiction of a metal
concert that feels representative
of the relationality that this book
pursues. “She jumped into the
melee, climbed over the swirl of
bodies smashing into each other,
then let herself be swept along
by the crowd, tumbling over the
human sea all the way to the foot
of the stage.” Gambling feels like
this, too: the narrator describes
the “electric shocks” he feels
when he’s tempted to relapse
and the “euphoria” of winning.
The
protagonist
thrives
on
momentum, and by the end of
the book you can tell that he’s
well-suited for the restaurant
industry
mostly
because
he
needs to feel that “euphoria” in
one way or another.
As
you
might
expect,
Larue
neither
denigrates
or
romanticizes
this
life.
The
cooks
and
dishwashers
have
embarrassing,
unromantic
ailments:
bad
backs,
limps,
eczema, rosacea. They sweat over
hot stoves, they cut themselves
badly, they are too exhausted or
hungover to function correctly.
One can clearly see how burnout
works in this world, how easy
it would be to suddenly find
oneself too spent to continue.
There are moments, however
fleeting, of solidarity — at one
point the sous-chef looks at the
protagonist after a particularly
difficult moment “as if he had
all the time in the world,” and
there’s another moment where
the protagonist’s coworkers fend
off an assailant in a bar.
The novel is generous to its
subject and on balance ends
up
feeling
compassionate
underneath
the
intensity
of
its surfaces. It never feels like
Larue wants to condemn or exalt
any aspect of this world, instead
seeking synthesis — resilience
becomes the desperate material
of life rather than a palliative;
hope and struggle feed off each
other.
‘The Dishwasher’ is loud,
energetic
and
absorbing
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
Nightfall
Little Big Town
Capitol Records Nashville
ALBUM REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Outsider
Series Premiere
HBO
Sundays @ 9 p.m.
All factors
considered,
it was only a
matter of time
before the
genres of horror,
crime and
mystery melded
together on
HBO to give us
“The Outsider”
The Dishwasher
Stéphane Larue
Biblioasis
Sept. 26, 2019